Otitis media

The following symptoms are characteristic at an otitis media:

• After the cold beginning mainly at night piercing, pulsating earaches or feeling of pressure in the ear usually some days appears.
• Sometimes the intense pains are accompanied by headaches.
• The hearing is reduced by the fluid accumulation in the ear.
• Fevers as well as vomiting and diarrhea can simultaneously appear.
• Hyperkinesia and crying frequently are characteristic at infants. You often don't drink either. Any touch in the ear area or also only the touchdown of a cap leads to pains and wines. Smaller children often throw the head to and fro and feel their hurting ear.
• Perhaps purulently bloody secretion leaves the auditory canal. The accumulated fluid then has squeezed so intensely in the middle ear from inside against the eardrum that it has caught on ("the ear has broken") and it comes from the ear to the discharge. The child has a "regular ear". By the decompression the earaches stop suddenly. The eardrum usually by themselves within 14 days heals.

The following therapies are used:

• If it (usually of pneumococci or Haemophilus influenzae) is a bacterial infection, an antibiotic is prescribed.
• Nose dropses going down are ordered so that mucosa the mucosa of the eustachian tube goes down and the middle ear is ventilated again be able to. You shouldn't be taken too long without a medical piece of advice since otherwise the nasal mucosa dries out too much.
• An expectorant preparation for taking which solves the mucus accumulated in the eustachian tube and tympanic cavity so that it can drain away is furthermore important.
• Paracetamol juice or suppositories help against the pains, for example. The pains usually after one to three days pass.
• Becoming often also homeopathic combination preparations in the form of guttas or being able to these help, particularly at once, taken at the beginning of the illness, ordered tablets, very well.

The following measures can support the healing:

• Red light and head steam baths seem going down to the mucosa of the eustachian tube.
• Heat soothes the pains. Put her child increased lightly on a hot-water bottle with the hurting ear.
• Alcohol or onion packs work by your germicidal contents substances and their heat.
• Ear guttas use at an otitis media little since the inflammation didn't succeed in them to the place. The eardrum lies between this. You work at inflammations of the external auditory canal.

Broader medical treatment possibilities at an otitis media:

• With children with whom extended pharyngeal tonsils (adenoid) are the con-causes of the frequent otitis medias these should be removed (adenotomy).
• Little pipes (grinding up small pipes) are put into the eardrum at multiple inflammations to safeguard a ventilating of the middle ear.
• Primarily if it has come and/or frequently existed an otitis media for the breakthrough of the eardrum, a hearing test should be carried out.

Complications also can appear at an otitis media:

• The inflammation spreads (mastoiditis) on the adjacent bone (mastoid process of the temporal bone). Behind the ear a pressure painful reddening and tumescence are, the auricle sticks out.
• In rare cases it comes to a brain skin inflammation (meningitis) or a face nerve paralysis.
• The internal ear can be damaged, it comes to hearing aggravation.
• Frequent otitis medias can lead to a durable impairment of the hearing by cicatrizations. The children are impaired by it in their speech development.